Weird. Tonight I went to the store to buy the requisite 6 pounds of M&Ms (it's a Microsoft tradition to treat your team to a pound per year on your anniversary*) and all they had was black and white. Apparently there is some sort of promotion going on - Oh Hey, check this out:

1. Throughout the country are six black and white bags of M&M'S® Brand Candies filled with ALL ONE COLOR of candies—and a winning game piece. There's a bag for each color of the M&M'S® Brand color mix (red, yellow, blue, green, orange and brown).

2. The six people who find these game pieces will each win a 3-day/2-night trip for four to Los Angeles, California, including participation in the special 1-day M&M'S® Brand event, a 2004 Volkswagen® New Beetle® Convertible GLS in a color that matches their game piece, and $20,000 cash.

Wow, guess it's a good time to have to buy 6 pounds - convertibles are so good in August in Seattle. (Well actually, I only bought 3 pounds of the black and white ones, because I dug in the Christmas discount bin and found 3 packages. So black and white and red and green for my anniversary, and 3 chances to win.)

*It's not officially my six year anniversary at Microsoft, since when I started at MSNBC on 1/5/98, I was an employee of the Microsoft-NBC joint venture. But the way I figure, it's close enough :)